ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the notion of prison buildings as coded, scripted entities which represent particular positions and imperatives, and the notion of the experience of these buildings as dynamic, multi-sensory, affective encounters. It explores the design of prisons and the intentions behind their operation as prisons in terms of the imperatives of states and their criminal justice systems. The chapter progresses through a consideration of architectural geographies' engagements with buildings as events and processes in relation to discourses of affect within human geography. It also draws together the notion of therapeutic landscapes, and extant research on prison design from criminology and environmental psychology, and finally discusses the utility of deploying these approaches for the study of prison buildings. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the emotional or affective geographies of prisons as buildings, so far overlooked within carceral geography, could prove an important and significant avenue of future enquiry.
